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  1. THACKERAY, William Makepeace. 

    Vanity Fair: A novel without a hero … with illustrations on steel and wood by the author. 

    London, Bradbury & Evans, 1848. 

    First edition in book form, with the traditional first-state characteristics, including: no street address in the imprint on the verso of the title-page; dedication leaf in small type with last line measuring 2⅛”; heading on page [1] in shaded rustic type; woodcut of the Marquis of Steyne...

    £1500

  2. LUCRETIUS. 

    Titi Lucretii Cari de rerum natura libri VI.  Ad optimorum exemplarium veritatem exacti.  Quae praeterea in hac...

    Padua, Giuseppe Comino [for Volpi], 2 January 1721. 

    First Volpi–Comino edition of Lucretius’s famous materialist and Epicurean poem, the most notable Italian edition of the eighteenth century.  The present work is the product of the long-running and fruitful collaboration between the printer Giuseppe Comino and the scholars Giovanni Antonio...

    £450

  3. [PRIMER.] 

    Abbecedario per imparar facilmente a sillabicare, coll’aggiunta di varie orazioni ad uso delle scuole. 

    Turin, Giacinto Marietti, [c. 1840?]. 

    A seemingly unrecorded Torino-printed primer, with a series of syllabised phrases on devotion and morality. 

    £400

  4. BALDWIN, William Charles.

    African hunting and adventure from Natal to the Zambesi including Lake Ngami, the Kalahari Desert, &c....

    London, Richard Bentley, 1863.

    Second edition recounting the African hunting expeditions of the famous hunter William Charles Baldwin (d. 1903), filled with ‘wild adventure, cool daring, and narrow escapes from death’ (Daily News, Dec. 1862).

    £150

  5. [LAW.]

    Loci communes iuris civilis. Ex mendis tandem, et barbarie, in gratiam studiosorum utiliter restituti. Addita sunt praesumptionum...

    Lyon, Sebastien Gryphius, 1545.

    Scarce civil law compendium edited by the German jurist and professor of law at Marburg, Johann Oldendorp (1480-1567), with the help of his student Michael Boldewan, comprising pithy definitions and maxims arranged alphabetically from ‘absentem’ to ‘vox servi’, drawn from legal authorities such...

    £300

  6. [MEDICINE.]

    La composition de la theriaque du Mithridat, des confections d’hyacinthe et d’alkermes, et de l’opiate de Salomon....

    Toulouse, Dominique Desclassan, 1689.

    First edition of this rare and most interesting work on ancient antidotes and tonics by three apothecaries of the city of Toulouse in the south of France.

    £750

  7. DU RONDEL, Jacques. 

    La vie d’Épicure. 

    Paris, Antoine Cellier, 1679. 

    First edition of Du Rondel’s Life of Epicurus, a seminal work in the study of eighteenth-century Epicureanism; an important copy, from the distinguished library of Pierre-Daniel Huet. 

    £1750

  8. ALLETZ, Pons Augustin.

    L’Albert moderne, ou nouveaux secrets éprouvés, et licites, recueillis d’après les découvertes les...

    Paris, et se vend à Liege, J.F. Bassompierre and J. van den Berghen, 1769.

    A nice copy of this popular book of secrets by the Oratorian, lawyer, and writer of reference works Alletz (1703-1785), with some interesting annotations.

    £275

  9. AUDEN, Wystan Hugh, and Christopher ISHERWOOD.

    The Dog beneath the Skin or where is Francis? A Play in three Acts.

    London, Faber and Faber Limited, [1954].

    Sixth impression. When Bridson had reviewed the play on its first publication in 1935 (along with two other works), he thought it ‘very good fun … as slick, symbolical and smart-Alecky as The Orators’, though the versification of the choruses was ‘on the slack side’. In 1965 Bridson...

    £100

  10. GRAVES, Robert.

    Collected Poems.

    Garden City, New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961.

    First edition, inscribed ‘Yours ever, Robert Graves, 1962’.

    £300

  11. AYRTON, Michael.

    Tittivulus, or the Verbiage Collector …

    London, Max Reinhardt, [1953].

    First edition, signed, of Ayrton’s first literary work, a ‘charming, satirically irreverent and amusing’ book about a minor demon charged with the collecting of idle and pompous words. It was first conceived for the radio and broadcast on 22 December 1952 – the producer was Francis ‘Jack’...

    £100

  12. [PADUA.] 

    Statuta Patavina noviter impressa cum diligenti cura et castigatione et cum additionibus necessariis tam provisionum...

    Venice, Girolamo Giberti, 25 January 1528. 

    An attractive volume of statutes relating to the city of Padua in northern Italy, edited by the legal scholar Bartolomeo Abborario, with detailed annotations by a practicing local lawyer. 

    £2500

  13. CHEESMAN, Thomas. 

    No. I. Six Heads Drawn and Engraved, by T. Cheesman. [London,] T. Cheesman, No. 40 Oxford Street; and to...

    First and only edition, extremely rare, of this complete series of six heads of young women wearing head scarves by ‘one of Bartolozzi’s most outstanding pupils’.

    £850

  14. GIOVANNI BATTISTA DA NAPOLI. 

    Opera et trattato, che insegna molti dignissimi secreti contra la peste, con li quali subito si...

    [Venice, 1556?] 

    Rare second revised edition (first 1527) of this work offering advice against the plague by the Augustinian friar Giovanni Battista, interleaved and annotated with unpublished Latin notes on the subject. 

    £2750

  15. AUDEN, Wystan Hugh, and Chester KALLMAN.

    The Magic Flute.

    London, Faber & Faber, [1957].

    First UK edition. Auden composed his translation of the Magic Flute libretto in 1956, in honour of the bicentenary of Mozart’s birth, working in conjunction with his friend and erstwhile lover, the American translator and librettist Chester Kallman (1921–1975). The dialogue is written in...

    £125

  16. AUDEN, Wystan Hugh.

    Louis MacNeice, a memorial Address, delivered at All Souls, Langham Place on 17 October, 1963.

    Privately printed for Faber & Faber, [1963].

    First edition, one of 250 copies.

    £150

  17. CHEMIN-DUPONTÈS, Jean-Baptiste.

    Code de religion et de morale naturelles, a l’usage des adorateurs de Dieu et amis des hommes;...

    Paris, chez l’auteur, an VII [1798-1799].

    A nice copy of this remarkable two-part handbook for members of the short-lived French Revolutionary deistic religious cult known as Theophilanthropy, compiled by its founder, the Parisian publisher and bookseller Jean-Baptiste Chemin-Dupontès (1760-1852).

    £850

  18. [VITTORIO EMANUELE II.]

    Alla gloriosa memoria di Vittoria Emanuele primo re d’Italia, gli Italiani residenti in New York convenuti...

    New York, Tipografia della scuola italiana, 1878.

    First edition of a commemorative tribute to the late Vittorio Emanuele II, first king of Italy, by the Italian community of New York.

    £500

  19. BENZI, Ugo.

    Regole della sanità et della natura de cibi … arricchita d’un trattato nuovo della ebbrietà et dell’ abuso...

    Turin, heirs of Giovanni Domenico Tarino, 1618.


    Scarce first edition of the vernacular works of the medieval Spanish physician Ugo Benzi (1376-1439) with commentary by the Turinese doctor Giovanni Lodovico Bertaldi (d. 1625), an extraordinary witness to their enduring popularity into the seventeenth century. Benzi’s Italian writings were first...

    £2500

  20. ANDREWS, Mark E.

    The Science and Engineering of Materials: A Theatre of Machine Books, 1472–1800.

    Toronto, AE Publications, 2023.

    An extraordinary survey of four centuries of machine books, tracing the evolution of printing techniques and draughtsmanship alongside the development of the machines themselves. In this catalogue of eighty-six works from his collection of books on civil engineering, Mark Andrews situates a series...

    £85